Today the plan was to get the heater on Scout reinstalled and then drive the 350 miles to Anchorage so we could get the tires we had waiting for us at Costco. At this point we thought we would have everything repaired and could begin to relax and enjoy our Alaska trip.
We wrapped up the installation of the heater and it seemed to work well. If you are in the Fairbanks area and need work on your Espar heater I highly recommend the team at Inland Mechanical Services. They did a great job getting us back on the road.
We wrapped up at Inland about noon, and began heading towards Anchorage. We went from clear skies in Fairbanks to cloudy skies as we headed south. The highway from Fairbanks to Anchorage passes Denali National Park. As we passed thru the park area it was quite cloudy so we had written off seeing Denali. When suddenly the mountain showed up clearly. Ton managed to get some good photos of the mountain.
Right after the mountain had showed itself to us, and just when we were thinking our tour of tire shops and mechanics of Yukon and Alaska was almost over. We got a check engine light telling us our emission system needed immediate service and the truck began counting down the miles until it went into “limp mode”. Essentially we had 150 miles until the truck began limiting our speed. After some cursing we began calling Chevrolet dealers in Anchorage to get an immediate appointment. The first two dealers could not get us in for 2 or 3 days, the last dealer Alaska Sales and Service were able to schedule us in tomorrow. So once again we will be spending time talking to mechanics.
We finally arrived at Ft. Richardson in Anchorage about 7pm. We saw another Tiger belonging to our friends Ron and Gabi Moeller. They were kind enough to invite us in where we caught up on our experiences, and drank a fair amount of their wine.